Bodycomb Rants and Raves

I recently ran across this article in the AJC about a foreclosure on a house that had been on the TV Show Extreme Makeover. To be on the show the owners were given $100k and their mortgage was paid off. So, how is it possible that they are now in foreclosure?
Well, the owners used their house as an ATM machine and took out $450,000. Real smart.

Lake City mayor Willie Oswalt was among the volunteers who helped build Harper’s home 3 1/2 years ago, and Beazer Homes was the main sponsor. The mayor told WSB he is baffled.
“Beazer gave them $100,000 cash, paid their mortgage off and they still can’t make it,” said Oswalt.

This story, and the many others that are in the news today, make me wonder about the responsibility that people have in regard to their own financial situation. And now the Federal Government is providing taxpayer dollars to privately owned companies (Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae) in order to prevent these banks from collapsing.

Here is a great opinion piece from the NY Sun.
This County isn’t about what you know…. it is about who you know.

This year the gardening experiment was growing flowers and vegitables from seed. The vegitables have done pretty well. We are starting to pick a few tomatoes and there are some cucumbers that need a little longer on the vine. The carrotts didn’t grow as anticipated. I think that the ground was too hard for them and it stunted their growth. The dogs really liked them though.

The flowers didn’t do so well. I had several vines that grew to about 12 inches and then stopped growing. It appeared that once they were transplanted into the ground it stopped their growth. However there were about four vines that did keep growing and then died. I think the weather this year and lack of spring rains really hurt them.

The one flower that did very well from seed this year was the sunflower. I planted two different types. The first were the normal tall sunflowers. Due to spacing requirements and planting them in the vegitable garden there weren’t a lot of them. About a dozen sunflowers grew over 5 feet tall and now look very pretty and even though they are in the backyard, they can be seen from the front. In the front yard I planted dwarf sunflowers. These did extremelly well as they get a lot of sun exposure. They are only about 2 feet tall and look very pretty.